The earliest account in detail--as far as we know--of Mayan ruins, situated in the States of Chiapas and Yucatan, is presented in the narrative of Captain Antonio del Rio, in 1787, entitled _Description of an ancient city near Palenque_. His investigation was undertaken by order of the authorities of Guatemala, and the publication in Europe of its results was made in 1822. In the course of his account he says, “a Franciscan, Thomas de Soza, of Mérida, happening to be at Palenque, June 21, 1787, states that twenty leagues from the city of Mérida, southward, between Muna, Ticul and Noxcacab, are the remains of some stone edifices. One of them, very large, has withstood the ravages of time, and still exists in good preservation. The natives give it the name of Oxmutal. It stands on an eminence twenty yards in height, and measures two hundred yards on each façade. The apartments, the exterior corridor, the pillars with figures in medio relievo, decorated with serpents and lizards, and formed with stucco, besides which are statues of men with palms in their hands, in the act of beating drums and dancing, resemble in every respect those observable at Palenque.”[8-†] After speaking of the existence of many other ruins in Yucatan, he says he does not consider a description necessary, because the identity of the ancient inhabitants of Yucatan and Palenque is proved, in his opinion, by the strange resemblance of their customs, buildings, and acquaintance with the arts, whereof such vestiges are discernible in those monuments which the current of time has not yet swept away. The ruins of Yucatan, those of the state of Chiapas and of the Island of Cozumel, are very splendid remains, and they are all of them situated in a region where the Maya language is still spoken, substantially as at the time of the Spanish discovery.[9-*] Don Manuel Orosco y Berra, says of the Indian inhabitants, “their revengeful and tenacious character makes of the Mayas an exceptional people. In the other parts of Mexico the conquerors have imposed their language upon the conquered, and obliged them gradually to forget their native language. In Yucatan, on the contrary, they have preserved their language with such tenacity, that they have succeeded to a certain point in making their conquerors accept it. Pretending to be ignorant of the Spanish, although they comprehend it, they never speak but in the Maya language, obeying only orders made in that language, so that it is really the dominant language of the peninsula, with the only exception of a part of the district of Campeachy.”[9-†]